There’s not a lot of new info here but the video is quite pretty and well worth watching. Don’t forget to sign in on the site to get that neat helmet once we complete all the training vids!

Here’s a quick overview of what Liam touches on in the video and some interjected speculation of my own:

Ranged Weapons

Arms and armor are designed to be customized multiple times in the field.

As mentioned before in the first Combat Trailer I’ve discussed here there are four main types of guns: Pistols, Shotguns, Assault rifles and Sniper rifles. Also as a reminder from the link above, SMGs are sorted under the category of pistols.

We’ve had specialized ammo as one way to customize a weapon in Mass Effect before but this time we are hearing about laser shells for shotguns, grenade augmentation for pistols (reminiscent of the Scorpion in ME3?) and electrical conduits which appear to add an electrical beam to the weapon, (presumably as an alt-fire ability?).

Melee Weapons

You’ll need finesse to wield an Asari sword or strength to wield a Krogan hammer.There’s a quick overview of biotics and tech skills, which we have a deeper look at in the Profiles and Favorites training video from yesterday. The imagery here is much sharper than yesterday’s trailer.

Jump Jets

We’re shown the hover and side ways dodge augmented by a jump jet. Remember that if you go the route of Adept, your Jump Jet is replaced by a Biotic lift skill.

BioWare released a new combat trailer today with the promised look at Combat Profiles and squad abilities in Mass Effect Andromeda.

Profiles

Your profiles are your class and playstyle combined. Rather than simply picking a class like before you can cherry pick abilities from the Biotic, Combat and/or Tech trees or you can focus on one or two of these. As with most other games the more you focus on one particular skill set the more powerful skills you unlock.

But it is interesting that the Pathfinder profile is only unlocked if you pick skills from all three skill types, however. Hopefully, that means that a Jack-of-all-traits build won’t be unviable to play in the long run.

Favorites

Favorites are a way to quickly access a set of three skills that you have previously grouped. So say your first Favorite grouping is all long range DPS. Sniper rifle, long range stunning or cloaking. You’d want something melee heavy on one of the other favorites.

When you switch between them, the skills in the set go on cooldown so it won’t be something that can be stance-danced with impunity in or out of multiplayer. Nevertheless, that means you can bring up to 12 different skills with you into a fight. Presumably, Profiles will have to be switched out of combat.

Note that if you go with a Biotics profile your jump jet is replaced by a Biotic lift! Neat little detail there!

Combos

Combos are back in Mass Effect Andromeda but now we’ll know when we pull one off. It’s a bit hard to tell in the screen cap below, but a message denoting a type Combo, here a Cryo Combo, flashes on the screen when it’s been achieved. A small addition to Mass Effect gameplay perhaps but one I’ve certainly wanted. I may even give a damn about power combos in MEA.

Backlash

One interesting new ability they showed off was Backlash. It is a Biotic ability that lets you shield yourself from enemy fire and project that fire back at the enemy!

And it looks A LOT like an invisible Captain America shield! Alright a really big one but still!

Cover

We’ll have destroyable cover in MEA though not the clearly marked incongruously placed frail boxes we saw in ME2 and 3. This orange glass or plast cover looks like any other part of the environment but is clearly destroyed during the fight:

Squad

The squad selection screen is looking mighty slick. Now it appears much more like you are contacting them on screen rather than the static lineups we’ve had in previous games:

It doesn’t look like we’ll be able to fit many more team members on it, though? Perhaps the list scrolls down in two columns? Or perhaps these are all we get? The latter is unlikely, however, as there has to be space for some DLC teammates at the very least.

Each team member has two active and three passive skills. Below in the case of Cora Harper, Charge and Nova are her actives and Shield Boost, Asari Commando, Defensive Training are her passives.

Squad mates can be leveled to be better at either setting up (priming) or detonating combos depending on your playstyle. It’s likely then that if you set your teammates to detonate your combos you or at least I might not even have to worry about it too much. The combos will just go off on their own!

The next video will be about exploration in Andromeda which should mean a really pretty video and I’m looking forward to it. Not that this one didn’t have its own brief glimpses of cool places:

Possibly Notooine?

It also looks like planet probing is back though. /sigh. Have a look at the video itself:
MASS EFFECT: ANDROMEDA | Combat Profiles & Squads | Official Gameplay Series – Part 2

What grabbed your attention in this trailer? Share below in the comments!

Natalie Dorner has been revealed as the voice behind Doctor Lexi T’Perro the Asari medical expert on the Hyperion. Below you will find a few different interviews with the well-known Game of Thrones actress who is stepping into a world of BioWare nerds for the first time. Please be gentle with her guys!

Natalie describes Lexi as having a gruff and dry humor which she thinks makes sense to put to a British voice. And explains that Lexi is imperative to the player as the physician and psychologist of the crew she’s in charge Ryder’s well-being.

Lexi T’Perro

Lexi is academic in the way she thinks – she has a great interest in alien anatomy and she’s sort of omnipresent on Ryder’s journey through the game, to advise in this calm way.

Natalie Dormer to Wired

Creative Director Mac Walters explains about the character that:

“From a player’s perspective, the fact that you can go to her and get opinions on how you’re playing, how people are reacting to the decisions you’re making is a nice nod to some of the choices the player is making in the game.”

So Lexi is going to be a whole lot more for the player than Doctor Chakwas or Yeoman Chambers were. Yes, Chambers did comment on the squad and on Shepard’s actions but this sounds like much more and much deeper. He goes on to point out that:

“One thing that we really wanted to push on Andromeda is great characters who seem to be going on with their lives even when the player wasn’t around”

For example, Lexi has a rivalry with PeeBee and apparently a bit of a crush on Drack.

PeeBee Riding Ryder? I’m down with that!

Here’s the video BioWare released on Natalie and Lexi. Big kudos to Caroline Livingstone, Performance & Voice Over Producer, who is the wizard behind the unique VO technology BioWare uses. I doubt you can find a heap of praises big enough to cover her contributions to voice acting or the impact her work has had on our gaming experience with BioWare games through the years.

Here’s another more informal interview with Natalie this time by WhatCulture. It’s always a bit odd to listen to two people talking about something you’ve been into for over a decade and they’ve just discovered but hey, I’m one of those weird 40-year-old women who plays Mass Effect, I think you’ll find there’s a lot of us, Ms. Dormer. Welcome to BioWare fanfiction btw /wave!

Featured

Today, to much fan fanfare, BioWare released the first in a series of videos that gives us a look at the combat through gameplay videos. It’s linked below so you can scroll right down to it, but here is the run-down of what it has to say about Weapons, Tech and Biotic skills in Mass Effect Andromeda and my thoughts on the matter.

Unsticky Cover

First of all the new dynamic cover system in ME:A will allow you to use anything for cover. Simply press against it and you’re in cover. We’ve heard last year that the cover system wouldn’t be Continue reading →